


Local Custom

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Kisses Bingo [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: A little bit of angst, F/F, Historical, Kisses Bingo, Prompt Fic, sort of Ineffable Wives?, they're both presenting female right at this moment anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26781913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley meet in an Ancestral Pueblan town and get caught up in human customs.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Kisses Bingo [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867150
Comments: 21
Kudos: 78
Collections: Kisses Bingo





	Local Custom

It wasn’t a religious ceremony. Those would come later, and foreigners like Aziraphale had been politely but pointedly disinvited. This was just a party, a celebration that the corn had grown well this year.

Aziraphale watched the gathering from the sidelines. Very early on, the humans had invented _dancing,_ and she[1] still found it intriguing. Music, human music, was fascinating enough, but the humans seemed to naturally combine it with motion, just as they naturally combined it with poetry and singing. Eve had invented singing only a few months after being cast out of the Garden, a last-ditch effort to send a colicky baby to sleep that blossomed into much more. Aziraphale carefully didn’t muse to herself about whether Adam and Eve leaving the Garden had been worth it for the music.

She also didn’t think about whether she was watching the crowd for red hair. She knew Crawley was here, but they hadn’t talked. Aziraphale should be asking herself questions like, “Why is Crawley here?” and, “What mischief is he getting up to,” not . . . just looking for him.

The tune stopped, and Aziraphale started plotting how to cut across the plaza to where the nibbles were set up. Corn was the staple, here, but they also did interesting things with beans—

“You, too. Come on, form a circle!”

It was the woman who had fallen into organizing people. Aziraphale startled a little at the realization that the woman was talking to her. “Er, circle?”

“For the circle dance.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly!”

“Why not?”

“I’m,” Aziraphale said, “I’m, I’m really not cut out for dancing.”

“It’s the easiest dance I know,” the woman said. “Some people do fancy footwork, but mostly you just hold hands and go around in a circle.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You’ll love it. Right, you in the outer circle—and you in the inner circle. You in the outer circle—”

Which was how Aziraphale found herself in the circle of humans, a little bit bewildered as to what she was doing there.

“All right! You all know the rules! You go around for as long as the music plays, and stop when it stops. Outer circle goes sunwise, inner circle countersunwise. When it stops, you give the person in front of you a kiss.”

“Oh, I _really_ don’t know,” Aziraphale said, unheard. And the drums and the flutes started playing, and she was tugged into motion.

She was not, as she had suspected, anything remotely resembling a good dancer. She nearly brought the circle to a halt from not being quick enough, and she almost stumbled, and all in all she wanted _out_ of this. Angels didn’t dance. Definitionally. If you were an angel, you didn’t dance, and if you danced, you weren’t an angel. Wasn’t that how it went?

Evidently not, because Aziraphale was still an angel and she was still going around and around, and—

And Crawley was in the inner circle.

Aziraphale managed, “Crawley, what are you—” before the circle swept her away. The demon, for her part, looked surprised.

This time, Aziraphale tried to rush the circle and nearly caused a pile-up that way. The people on either side of her were starting to make remarks. “—doing here?” she managed, as Crawley came back into view again.

“Me? What are _you_ doing—”

The circle swept her away again.

Aziraphale was almost starting to get the hang of this. Around the circle, various people were doing more complicated things with their feet, crossing their legs over as they went, but Aziraphale wasn’t about to try anything like that when she had only just got her legs cooperating with the music. You followed the drumming, that was how it worked. The drumming went _BUMP bump BUMP bump BUMP bump_ and the loud _BUMPS_ were when you moved your left foot and the small _bumps_ were when you caught up with your right—

“Probably thwarting you, but I don’t know what—”

Gone again.

It was actually—not bad? Aziraphale was not naturally suited to the whole _rhythm_ business, and the more advanced dances baffled her even as they fascinated her, but this was easy enough. And a little bit exhilarating, even . . .

No. No. Don’t think like that. Angels don’t dance.

Except that Aziraphale was dancing, and she was still an angel.

"I'm here to thwart _you,"_ Crawley said, as Aziraphale came into view again. And then the drums stopped, and they were face to face.

Local custom, Aziraphale thought, feeling dizzy and frightened and weirdly elated. It’s the rules. Nothing for it.

She carefully didn’t think about all the different ways, with or without miracles, that she could avoid the rules. And carefully didn’t think about why she wasn’t thinking about that. She wasn’t sure she was thinking about much of anything at all, except noticing that Crawley’s eyes were wide, and her face was serious and maybe a little bit frightened, but she was leaning forwards too, and—

It was just a brush of the lips, really. No more than many human cultures exchanged in greeting. There was no reason for it to tingle like the electricity before a storm. No reason to feel like it had Changed Things on a level that Aziraphale wasn’t going to think about yet.[2]

“I,” Aziraphale said, and then touched her lips to see why they felt so different, and then said, “I, I, I, if you’ll please excuse me.”

And let go of the hands of the humans on either side, and fled.

She didn’t stop moving until she was outside the town. She knew what was coming, emotionally. Guilt, great horrific hurricanes of it, but they were getting somehow easier to bear. As if Aziraphale’s Heaven Thoughts and Crawley Thoughts lived in different countries, and only skirmished when the weather was right and the armies were willing.

That was a rather mixed metaphor, wasn’t it.

There, you see? She had to be all right, or else she wouldn’t be worried about mixed metaphors.

She was still an angel. She had danced, and she had kissed a demon, and she was still an angel. Her mind shied away from both facts. She didn’t want to think about the implications. And she didn’t want to think about why she wasn’t thinking about the implications.

She wouldn’t mention it, Aziraphale decided, when she met Crawley next. Just ignore it. After all, it had only been local custom.

* * *

1Aziraphale usually told the humans she was male, simply because it was convenient. In this particular case, however, her clothing more closely resembled what the locals thought of as female clothing, and Aziraphale didn’t want to alter her robe, so here they were. [ return to text ]

2There were a lot of things Aziraphale wasn’t going to think about yet. A multitude of things. Aziraphale was perhaps the world’s champion of not thinking about things, and she wasn’t going to give up the title any time soon. [ return to text ]


End file.
